


Oubliette

by Nepthys



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-06
Updated: 2009-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nepthys/pseuds/Nepthys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short character study for the challenge: "memory".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oubliette

There are things Sam Tyler would rather forget.

Hardly an uncommon sentiment, one might say; the past is littered with whispered dreams, poorly-made decisions and half-meant promises, like confetti strewn at yesterday's wedding. But for Sam it is made all the more poignant by the fact that he remembers things which have not yet happened.

At first, he is careless of his illicit and impossible knowledge, bandying events and outcomes around as though words had no power, no meaning. What can it possibly matter, when this world isn't even real; when nothing he does – or doesn't do – can make a difference anywhere other than in a figment of his own imagination.

And yet.

And yet, something keeps him from giving up; from simply staying in bed and waiting to see if this world ends. If there's just the slightest chance that his actions here can affect the _real_ world then he has to try. Seek out every chance to put things right, and to finally find his way home.

But whatever he does seems to make no difference.

For every action he takes, something seems to counter-balance it – an unseen yin to his yang – and nothing changes, even when he ignores all those rules about not stepping on butterflies or killing your own grandfather or accidentally passing your four-year-old self on the street. He's still here; this world having spectacularly failed to disappear in a paradox-induced implosion, or to have unravelled like so much old knitting.

And when not even a gun-toting showdown with his own younger-than-him father alters the course of history, Sam becomes complacent in his reliance on his past. He starts to think that the future can be used here, now. He can reference as yet undiscovered policing techniques, bet on the Grand National, forecast the weather, even; confident that history will repeat itself, bounded only by the extent of his own memory.

Only things don't work out like that. Not always.

And even when they do, it's not in the ways he thinks they will. Because it seems that he _can_ stop crimes before they happen, but not without exposing his own looming madness; he _can_ make predictions based on his policing experience, but not without almost getting a team member blown to kingdom come; (he's still tempted to try betting on a Grand National winner, but he suspects that any windfall will be countered by an opposite – and not necessarily equal – loss). And the nagging voice that says maybe – just maybe – this _isn't_ all in his mind is getting louder and louder until the world around him seems to be solidifying with every breath he takes.

As surely as his existence of browns and beige shifts imperceptibly into something altogether more colourful, Sam begins to understand that his memory is a traitorous thing; and by the time he's thrown himself off a rooftop, he realises that the only way to live his life is to keep those memories buried deep, locked safely away from the prying eyes of others and a temptation to meddle which is all his own.

The key to living in the past, he decides, flicking off the car radio, is to forget the future.

***

END 


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